Weird Song of the Week - Hot War

 Hot War

Friday 11 March 2022

The world’s attention has been riveted to the war in Ukraine.  I know I have been.  Here in Australia, we have other things to occupy our TV viewing.  Queensland and Northern New South Wales are experiencing a once in a century flood event.  For Queensland, it is their second once in a century flood event in 10 years.  Yes folks, climate change is real.  These floods have been terrible.  I have never seen anything like them here, and I thought the 2011 floods were bad. 

We also experienced the death of a sporting superstar.  He was the Tiger Woods of Cricket, not only in his on-field exploits, but his off field exploits as well.  He died suddenly at age 52 which shocked everyone here in Australia.

Last week my column on Ukraine generated a lot of responses, but ones I did not expect.  The column led to very deep and long discussions with Ukrainians about what is going on, and what could or should happen when this terrible war ends.  Weird Song is not political, so I’ll just say that the situation in Ukraine was very nuanced prior to the war and feelings run strongly in what was and still is a divided country.  Also, thanks to everyone who allowed me, an American/Australian, to get a very in-depth glimpse into this country.  I have been to most of the countries in that region, but not Ukraine.  I hope I can go to a peaceful and prosperous Ukraine one day.

Reader Rowen, who is from Bulgaria, also wanted to correct me on my history of the syllabic alphabet.  Apparently, the two Greek monks began their work in Bulgaria, not Kyiv as I stated, and they did so earlier than I stated.

History has a way of repeating itself.  It has been many years since the cold war, and we forget what it was like.  We read about the era in history books, but books, especially textbooks, generally give you the facts.  What we miss out is how people were feeling at the time, their fears, their hopes, and their emotions in general.  There is nothing like music to do that.  Since this is a column about weird songs, I will turn to the great Tom Lehrer.  His songs have been featured many times before.  This time, I want to examine the issues we face today as we stand at the very edge of the World War III cliff and remind ourselves that we faced these issues before.

Uppermost in our consciousness was the fear of nuclear annihilation.  It was a very real fear back then.  We sort of forgot about it in the 90’s and the 00’s but we are sure remembering our fear now.  Here is Tom Lehrer in So Long Mom (A Song of WW III)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGT6bdlcLPI

I was in a work meeting this week with CNN in the background.  And there, on live TV, was a nuclear powerplant on fire and being shelled. I couldn’t believe it.  We were this close to another Fukushima, and I was watching it live.  It was very hard to concentrate on anything else.  I was like a rat in front of a snake.  This can’t be happening I told myself.  But it did and we dodged a huge nuclear bullet this week.

Of course, a lot of people will die in a nuclear war, and Tom Lehrer reminded us of this with his classic We Will All Go Together When We Go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvWZ4KcS63E

He wrote this in the style of an old-time gospel revival hymn.

Another issue we dealt with back then were the really grey moral choices we had to make.  One of the biggest and most controversial at the time was the United States putting German rocket scientist Werhner von Braun in charge of the space program.  No one questioned his brilliance.  But was he a good person?  Was he a courageous scientist who opposed Hitler as the government press releases maintained, or was he actually a Nazi who saw the writing on the wall and saved his own skin?  Space was crucial and the United States was in a race with the Soviet Union, who took their own share of German scientists, to dominate space.  Should the government cast aside morality in the name of necessity?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio

This was a very painful ethical issue at the time, and you can see this with another great Tom Lehrer satire. It is also interesting that Lehrer slams the moon program because it cost so much.  This is forgotten today as NASA’s moon program is universally hailed as a great thing, well in the USA anyway. 

Before the Ukraine crisis, the hard right leaders of Poland and Hungary were slammed by America and Europe.  Now we’re all best friends.  As I write this, President Biden is trying to persuade Saudi Arabia, led by a psychopathic Crown Prince, to help America and Europe by increasing oil production.  He is also reaching out to Nicolas Maduro, leader of Venezuela whom the US dubbed as evil on two legs to see if we find a way Venezuela can return to world oil markets.  This has really upset the large Venezuelan community in Florida, a close state politically, and could keep Florida in the hands of Republicans.  Hard moral choices, and sometimes immoral choices, are made at times like this.

Another issue facing us today is the notion that Europe must rely less upon the USA for its military defense and more on itself.  I cannot see this happening without Germany rearming.  This is already beginning to happen with Germany sending offensive weapons to Ukraine.  Germany has the strongest economy in Europe, and it is inconceivable to me that Europe defend itself without Germany rearming itself.  Memories of WW II are long, however, and that will make a number of European countries nervous.

During the Cold War, it became increasingly obvious that West Germany would play a vital role in deterring the Soviet Union from European expansion.  The problem was, this meant giving Germany control of weapons and this really made people nervous.  One of the early incarnations of this doctrine was something called the Multilateral Force or MLF.  Tom Lehrer created a satire of the MLF.  I find myself singing this too myself a little too often for comfort.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgA-V67eF2U

This clip features a live performance in San Francisco.  The newspaper he refers to is the San Francisco Chronicle.  Note also the sarcasm when Lehrer calls France a friend of America.  Charles de Gaulle might have resisted the Nazis and rallied the French, but no one liked him, and he didn’t like anyone either and proved to be most irritating to the allies after the war.

Many of the French collaborated with the Nazis so after the war, the country was very divided.  My mother-in-law Erna used to tell us a very interesting story.  She is German and her part of Germany was given to the French.  She says the French came into all the German factories in her area, which was the South of Germany, and took all the equipment and technology to use for themselves.  After their factories were stripped bare by the French, the Germans were forced to rebuild from scratch.  Technology really advanced during the war, however, so when they rebuilt, the equipment they built was much better than what they had before, which the French had taken.  So, with better equipment and better manufacturing capability, West Germany soon surpassed France and this irritated de Gaulle on top of everything else that irritated him, and everything irritated him.  In fairness to the French, it must have been very difficult to allow Germany to be part of the nuclear deterrent.  MLF failed, but eventually the West worked things out.

You might recall a couple of weeks ago we had the satire Don’t Let’s be Beastly to the Germans. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wveW9Tw2JKE

Asking Europe to stand on its own is very difficult, more difficult than many imagine.  We can see from the post war songs just how hard it was.

And finally, another fear we faced back then was the spread of nuclear weapons.  As the world watches what is happening in Ukraine, there must be a number of small nations thinking they need nukes.  In 1994, Ukraine gives up the nuclear weapons they had to Russia in exchange for Russian recognition of their sovereignty.  If Ukraine still had their nukes would Putin have invaded?  Most likely not.  So, I think we can look forward to a scramble for nuclear capability.  In Tom Lehrer’s satire Who’s Next, he addressed this problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_DUaYKJCAA

Here we see again Lehrer’s cynicism when declaring France to be a friend.  Personally, what scares me the most is the prospect of Alabama having full control of nuclear weapons.  This simply must never happen.

I love these songs because they remind us of the fears people had.  We also see here what common people were saying and thinking.  Today, as I write this, we literally stand closer to World War III than at anytime in my life.  The Cuban Missile Crisis was a year before I was born.  I’m going to say what we used to say back then.  If we don’t blow ourselves back into the Stone Age, we might just scare ourselves into peace.

May peace return soon, for the sake of Ukraine, for the sake of Russia and the Russian people who were wonderful to me when I visited there twice, even if they laughed at my attempts to speak Russian, and also to the rest of us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fhJ6XrZ4jg

I leave you today with Dona Nobis Pacem.  Indeed Lord, please give us peace and let it come soon.

And here is an online choir singing this beautiful song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNzBjg2wJeA

No matter what side one is on in any war, peace is infinitely better.